Restaurant review: Meat to the max at cocky Cockscomb in S.F.

The rough concrete walls have been left natural and the concrete floor is a faded blood-red. Just about every item on the menu has meat, whether it’s pig ears cut like spaghetti and tossed with a spicy tomato sauce; oysters baked with nduja ($14); or a Little Gem salad ($12) dressed in Green Goddess and garnished with pork cracklings. Cosentino developed a national reputation for whole-animal cookery and Italian food at Incanto in outer Noe Valley, where the space felt like a Tuscan stage set with faux rock walls. After a run of several years, Cosentino and his partners turned the restaurant into a semi self-serve concept called Porcellino, which they recently closed. At Incanto, Cosentino’s Italian dishes played around with tuna hearts, tripe, pig ears and the like. [...] few chefs take it as far as Cosentino does, with such things as beef heart tartare ($16) — which tastes better than many versions made with rib eye or tenderloin — and bone marrow ($20) topped with fried oysters and balanced with horseradish. The selection of oysters and shellfish, which always includes at least four varieties, is a refreshing way to prepare for what is to follow. Petrale sole ($34), nearly black from the coating, rested on dark brown butter verjus sauce studded with grapes. The kitchen removed the fish head but left the bones, and the combination of low the dark food and low light level in the restaurant made maneuvering around the skeleton akin to a surgeon operating with a penlight. Surprisingly, the country pate ($16), a thick slice of rough ground meat studded with pistachios, needed more seasoning to reach its full potential. If you wanted to add a little more fat, the pate was accompanied by butter to spread on the grilled bread. Fat is used generously — duck renderings flavor the cauliflower ($7) with capers, mint and red Fresno chiles ($7); and a final flourish of lardo glazes the crab bruschetta ($19), made with toasted Tartine bread, uni aioli and translucent slices of radishes. Few dishes are light, not even the celery Victor ($12), a classic dish invented by Victor Hirtzler at the St. Francis Hotel, where stalks of celery are cooked in chicken and veal stock and then doused in vinaigrette. Cosentino’s version brings a mound of chopped celery combined with celery root, parsley and crisp chicken skin. The dense, juicy meat was enhanced with grilled onions, Gruyere cheese, a thick swipe of Dijon mustard and aioli. The one vegetarian main course ($22), with creamy toasted oats, maitake and button mushrooms, kale and a poached egg, would have been exceptional if — yet again — it hadn’t been oversalted. A similarly overexuberant hand plagued the meat pie ($38), where the lard crust — naturally — encased a thick blend of pork belly and snails. The dish also seemed expensive for the preparation, as did the $35 quail tetrazzini, which consisted of two birds doused in creme fraiche and mushrooms topped with crispy threads of pasta. Fruit, which on our visits was a poached pear; Chocolate, a flourless cake; Classic, an unfortunate wedge of cold, sodden stacked crepes; and Cheese, which on our visits was blue cheese with honey.